We recently had an email from a lady who had inherited a Cedar clad garden room when she had brought a new house. The Cedar has weathered to a silver-grey, and she was wondering if the Cedar needed any treatment to preserve it. If so, what were her options?
In this situation, you have two choices leave the Cedar alone, allowing it to continue to age, or apply a coloured UV-oil to restore the colour.
Silver Cedar is still durable
Cedar has a lifespan of 20+ years without the requirements of ongoing maintenance. This is why it is so popular. The thing is, like any untreated exterior timber cladding it will change colour as it ages to silver-grey. Not everybody likes this, as it can make the garden room look aged.
Silver Cedar is no less durable to rot or fungal attack. It is just the surface colour that has changed as it has been exposed to sunlight.
Protecting the colour of new Cedar cladding
We've written recently about our experiment to maintain the colour of our Cedar cladding here at Garden Room HQ, using OSMO UV-oil. If you haven't read the article, we decided as it was fitted that we wanted to maintain the reddish-brown colouring of the Cedar rather than let it weather to silver-grey.
When the cladding was fitted, we applied some of the Clear OSMO UV-oil to a couple of off-cuts, leaving half of the boards to weather naturally. One year on, the OSMO coated half still has colour, while the untreated half has weathered to a mellow silver.
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Restoring the colour of silver-grey Cedar
If your Cedar cladding has weathered to silver, but you would like to restore it to reddish-brown colour, what are your options?
In the past, we have sanded Cedar boards to remove the grey surface and had some success in doing so. It is a laborious task and not really practical to attempt on a garden room! Not only do you have a vast surface area, but all the grooves between the boards to consider. It would be a mighty, big job!
The more practical option is to apply a coloured Cedar stain. OSMO whose clear UV-oil is working very well for us, also do coloured versions. We picked up one of their sample sachets of the Cedar colour to see how it works on aged Cedar.
We applied the sample to a section of our aged Cedar test board. Our first thought was that it was good that it was semi-transparent, allowing the grain of the Cedar to remain visible. But, we also thought that it was very dark!
Once it had dried, we tested the colour against some of our new Cedar off-cuts to see how the colour matched. Surprisingly, we think the colour is a pretty good match with a dark Cedar board. The thing is, the colour of new Cedar cladding will vary from board to board, depending on where it was cut from the tree. We tested it against lighter boards and its still a pretty good colour match, as you can see.
All in all, even testing on a small surface. We can see the OSMO Cedar UV-oil is a good option if you want to restore colour to aged Cedar cladding.
You could try samples of the different colour OSMO UV-oils if you are looking for a lighter finish.
Applying a coloured oil like this, you will get a uniform colour across all the boards. With newly fitted Cedar, you would expect some shade variation between the boards, so you won't be able to replicate that.
Easy to apply
From our experience, OSMO UV-oils are easy to apply. We have cleaned the boards before starting removing dirt and dust. We have then applied two coats using a paintbrush. It is worth buying the OSMO brush cleaner/thinner for cleaning up.
Some of the links in this article are affiliate links. If you click on them and proceed to buy, we will get a small payment. Thank you for that, it helps us keep creating content about buying a garden room.
